


Winglets: Student

by canonkiller



Series: Wings of Fire Rewrite [2]
Category: Wings of Fire - Tui T. Sutherland
Genre: F/F, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-28 22:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13913874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canonkiller/pseuds/canonkiller
Summary: Queen Glory adores the responsibility of making Jade Mountain Academy feel like home, and she loves that she has her siblings to help her do it.But paperwork? Paperwork sucks.-----Takes place during the year between The Brightest Night and the beginning of Moon Rising.





	Winglets: Student

Glory was beat. She felt like every muscle in her body just  _sagged_ , including her brain - though not enough to prevent Sunny's voice from chirping in her head, 'that's not a muscle, that's an organ!' - and she fancied that if she lay down, she would just melt into the ground and fall asleep forever. Jambu, this time, reminding her that  _suntime is a biomological nicety for RainWings, not laziness!_ (Jambu had a great grasp of the RainWing language, Caroon - above average, if the praises for his songwriting were accurate - but Glory had only learned Pyrrhic, and Jambu did his best to make it work.) Even with his slight mangling of the mixed language, his half-remembered voice  _was_ right; sleeping underground would not do her any favors.

Sunny would also not do her any favors if she learned Glory was putting off her paperwork, but the headache that one could walk away from was certainly the lesser of the two evils. Even  _if_ she made  _that face_ when she was disappointed.

 _Ugh, sisters._ Glory made a face, wincing a little as her exaggerated grimace tweaked an already sore muscle in her jaw.  _Wouldn't give them up for the world._

As she padded through the empty halls, she tried to imagine what it would be like to have them full of dragons. Full of dragonets, she corrected, adjusting her vision of a packed hallway to about five feet lower. It seemed... strange, to her, if she admitted it. She'd been taken from her blood family when she was still in the egg, and while she loved her adopted siblings dearly, a part of her still grieved the loss of being raised by dragons who hated her instead of the communal one-big-happy-family of the RainWings. How could any dragon choose to give up their child, even temporarily?

She probed the idea like a loose tooth. If Jambu had the chance to learn Pyrrhic, so strangers wouldn't give him dirty looks that he insisted he didn't mind but his scales turned blue at, would she let him go? She didn't think she had it in her to stop him, if he wanted to go. She shook her head; she always thought of him as a rambunctious, oversized dragonet rather than her older brother, a side effect of meeting him when he was trying to keep the RainWings' spirits up while their families vanished and while she was firmly settled in the being-a-cynical-asshole-is-the-only-way-to-show-maturity phase.  _Thanks for_ that  _one, guardians._

Ugh, exhaustion always made her thoughts stray. No wonder the guardians had thought she was useless while they kept her indoors all the time; she probably  _was_. Starflight had described it as a 'sunlight anemia', which she told him was a stupid name and then threw a banana at him to make the point. (Clay had caught it in his mouth before it had the chance to hit. The giant puppy. Another distracted snort;  _siblings_.) She couldn't exactly disagree with Starflight's terrible naming skills, in his favor. It did seem like about the same concept, and that had motivated her to actually look into nutrition and make up a meal plan so that she wouldn't get hit with  _double_ anemia, and then Sunny had so happily suggested that Glory could do the student files and figure out what the school needed to stock, and how could she disagree when Sunny was doing  _that face_ right at her, point blank.

Oh, right, that was what she was supposed to be doing.  _Whoops_.

The hallway in front of her opened into an atrium, large enough for a good two hundred dragons to stand on the floor and the balconies along the mountainside wall, and many times that if they were told to fly, and it was otherwise empty. The scale of it awed Glory every time she saw it; a sheer face of cliff just gone, replaced by a bubble of some translucent material that she always forgot the name of - glass! - imported from artists in the Sand Queendom, tinted a myriad of colors that cast the sunlight streaming in with rainbow hues, dappling the trees, vines, bushes and hanging baskets flourishing around the enclosed space. The panels at the main entrance were nothing compared to the dome, even if Glory had the nagging sense that Sunny turned her most potent weapon, the puppy eyes, on her royal mother in order to make it happen. Perhaps that made it even nicer.

Glory had instantly taken the job of creating spaces in the academy where dragons could feel like they were at home. She didn't think any of her siblings even toyed with the notion that she wouldn't leap on the chance; this was not going to be another stone prison. This was going to be a second home for these dragonets, even if she worked herself to the bone doing it.  _This_ , the atrium, was RainWing through and through.

Which was why it was rather surprising when she saw a SkyWing lounging in one of the sturdier trees, draped across a wide branch like the leopards she'd seen in the jungle, and looking just as interested and dangerous. 

Glory almost screeched, her mind leaping to the thought of Peril taking a stroll through the atrium and burning it all to cinders. Her only hesitation was that there were not yet any fires, and Glory was quite sure Peril's abilities didn't work based on external observation. No, this was a different SkyWing, younger than Peril and much darker in color. Glory had to go back to the big cat comparisons; the dragon was a dark, rich red, with a paler belly and darker, either black or very  _very_ dark red, stripes. Not a leopard, then; a tiger. If they climbed trees.

She swallowed her surprise, and fell back her royal training with Ex-Queen Grandeur instead of her haunches. "Hello! I'm Queen Glory, one of the administrators. I fear you have me at a disadvantage, I do not know your name."

The SkyWing looked her over with bright orange eyes. "Good. I prefer it."

Well. Royal training didn't tend to cover that.

"It's a matter of security, really, we can't have strangers wandering the academy, whether or not children are present."

"Clay let me in," the SkyWing replied with a dismissive wave of her talons.

 _Clay would let anyone in who asked nicely,_ Glory thought to herself. Aloud, she answered, "well, seeing as it wasn't  _me_ who let you in, I'm going to need your name."

The SkyWing gave her another one of those slow, observing looks, and then abruptly heaved herself up and jumped down from the tree. She landed gracefully, a practiced ease that Glory assumed came from spreading those large wings of hers much more often than Glory had a chance to. (The wings were red and striped too, she noted, and the same paler color on the undersides.) When she stopped in front of Glory, she had to tilt her head up just enough to be obvious in order to look the SkyWing in the eyes. At least it meant the SkyWing couldn't be much older than she was; the speed at which SkyWings grew seemed very rude to everyone else who had to look up at them, especially if that someone was a Queen and not much in the height department.

"Carnelian," the SkyWing answered, "enrolled by the request of the Queen."

Her tone made it very clear that her Queen (Ruby, Glory guessed) was the only one that mattered, and also that had it been anyone else who'd told her to apply to some educational hole in the rocks they would have been sent scurrying for it.

"Pleased to meet you," Glory replied simply. "And your reason for being here early?"

"To try to find the room where I can be as far away as possible from my roommate." Carnelian answered.

Glory tried to hold in a snort and failed. "What, not much of a people person?"

Carnelian's expression shifted briefly away from passive disinterest, to make a quick pit stop in surprised and satisfied before looping back around. "You could say that."

Something very small in her voice, or her posture, or  _something_ had changed. All of a sudden, Carnelian had plopped her down on an even playing field, and was at least treating her like a dragon, though like royalty might have been preferred. Or maybe that would just be awkward.

"I'm afraid we're not doing first-come-first-served, here, Carnelian, the rooms and roommates are pre-assigned. I suppose I could take you there, and you could choose your bed?"

Carnelian eyed her. "Do you accept bribes?"

Glory felt a wash of surprised orange whirl down her neck. She figured Carnelian could probably see it, which was unfortunate. "I... do not think I do, no."

"A shame," Carnelian replied, her tone and expression so controlled that Glory couldn't tell whether or not she was serious. "I was hoping I'd be able to offer a relationship in exchange for using a staff room.

"Ah," Glory said, or tried to say, since she was pretty sure it came out more as an 'eep'. Carnelian, for her part, continued to remain unfazed. "Ah, relationships between staff and students are off limits."

Carnelian shrugged. "Show me to my room, then."

~~~~~

"I'm ninety percent sure she was flirting with me," Glory said, hunched over a stack of papers. Her pen seemed almost forgotten, save for when she was biting at the back of it while she thought. "Do SkyWings flirt, with that breeding program thing?"

"Eggs and dating are different things, and Ruby abolished the program," Tsunami answered, scratching in her usual blocky handwriting through a stack of papers on her own. "Did you ask her about SkyWing dietary requirements?"

Glory looked up at her in surprise. "Is _that_ how they flirt?"

"That's how you do your job," Tsunami answered, jabbing her pen towards her in emphasis. "If I'm dealing with pump engineers all day, you need to be asking any SkyWing you can  _find_  about what they choose to eat."

"Pump engineers?"

" _Someone_ needs to keep clean water in your little SeaWing haven, or everything's going to smell like algae in a week." Tsunami flared her nostrils, as if smelling it already. "The lower levels of the SeaWing palace, where the water current was worse? Tasted terrible, constantly. I'm not going to be drinking slime water in the place supposed to keep me from stressing me out."

"Oh," Glory replied.

Tsunami broke Glory's guilty thoughts with a gentle bop to the nose. "Don't mope, it's beautiful down there. I love it, I'm sure the students will. All of those underwater caves were a really nice touch, especially the ones with the murals. A couple of the volunteers who came to plan out the pipes were really impressed by all the work you'd done, they're going to make sure nothing gets damaged."

Glory's frills flared as she caught a note of wistfulness in Tsunami's voice. "A couple of volunteers, you said?"

"Don't turn yourself pink over it, banana brain," Tsunami replied, smiling. "Yes, there was a drakka there who I wouldn't mind spending more time with, I'll admit it. And before you give me that smug look, I already KNEW I was going to find someone else after Manatee, even if she was cute."

Glory elbowed her. "I've rambled about my relationship woes-" Tsunami interrupted with a wordless scoff, "-so you have to tell me about your... pump engineer."

Tsunami groaned, the long-suffering sigh of someone who had accepted their siblings were always going to manage to wedge themselves into their secrets. "Her name is Fen, she's a MudWing."

"Oooooh," Glory encouraged.

Tsunami glared at her. "She's volunteering because she likes the idea of the school, loves dragonets, loves helping."

"And wrestling?" Glory teased.

Tsunami let out a soft, shrill whistle, and whispered, "she's just so  _buff._ "

~~~~~

Glory was pretty sure Carnelian was avoiding her. A part of her argued that it was just a very large school, and she was mostly spending her time in her room calculating costs and weights while Carnelian was likely doing anything  _but_ that, and it wasn't like they'd really talked to make avoidance any different than normal. But  _still_...

Well, she still needed to finish those food plans. She supposed there was always Peril, but Glory was pretty sure whatever Peril's normal was, it was not a standard shared by the general SkyWing populace.

No, it was going to have to be Carnelian. Which meant  _finding_ Carnelian. 

Glory left her calculations scattered around the desk (and floor, and bed,) and strode purposefully towards the door, pulling open with a very determined swing, and nearly caused Carnelian to faceplant as the sturdy wood vanished from under her hand.

"I was just about to go looking for you," Glory said, finding it difficult to think of anything else.

Carnelian ducked her head, looking away. "I wanted to apologize for making you uncomfortable when we talked. I, uh, wanted to give you some distance for a while to make sure I wasn't being... creepy about it."

"No, no, not creepy at all," Glory dipped her head to mirror Carnelian's, and Carnelian straightened up when she did. "I do need to ask you some questions, though. Do you want to come in?"

"Sure," Carnelian stepped into the room as Glory moved aside, taking in the whirlwind of papers that were still slightly drifting after Glory's exuberant door-swinging. "Is... is everything alright?"

Glory blinked, looking at the mess as if it had materialized out of thin air. "Math."

"Ah," she replied knowingly, seeking for a comfortable spot to sit without disturbing any papers. Glory walked over to the bed and hastily scattered the sheets still perched there, nodding Carnelian towards it while she returned to the desk. Carnelian hopped up on the bed, her wings resting over the edge on either side. "I guess I get to use your bed after all."

Glory clicked her tongue. "I'm not in charge of grading, that's Starflight's job. If you want to bribe someone, try him."

Carnelian  _hmm_ ed. "You're really okay with the, uh, the flirting thing? I'm not underage or anything, by the way, I know how old you are. And how old I am."

"None of us want to end up giving one student special treatment over the others, that's why the rule is in place." Glory tilted her head. "But between us, before everything's set in stone? I'm kind of flattered, really. You're rather... striking."

Carnelian grinned, and then replied rather sheepishly, "I doubt I'll have the time to preen as much once I have a courseload. My scales get all dull when I'm stressed."

"Hm, when I'm stressed I tend to go red too. Guess we'll be rusty together." Glory realized, in the meantime, she was getting much closer to  _pink._ "I needed to ask about what the regular SkyWing diet is, actually, I've managed to find enough data on everyone else, and I don't want you to go hungry."

"Oh, that easy?" Carnelian asked. "Get some fresh paper, I'll tell you a list of things. And recipes, too, I've started to get pretty good at cooking."

~~~~~

It took many, many pages to scribble out the instructions to most of Carnelian's memorized dishes, and by the end of it Glory's hand was cramped and Carnelian looked like she'd kill for a glass of water. 

"How about you go down to the kitchen, get a snack, see if you can interrupt Clay and if he has any time to practice some recipes with you?" Glory suggested. "None of us know very much about SkyWing cuisine, so it would be nice to have a taste tester before we end up accidentally serving dirt to a bunch of fledglings."

"Probably a good idea," Carnelian rasped, hopping down off the bed. She was halfway out the door before she stopped, looking back over her shoulder at Glory. "Uh, there wasn't a good time to mention this, but... you might want to consider making a patio or platform somewhere up the cliff for the SkyWings. Your atrium would be fine in a pinch, but SkyWings tend to like the wind and open air, not glass and tall trees."

She didn't wait for a reply, just ducked her head in goodbye and trotted off down the hallway. Glory stared after her for a moment, designs running through her head, before she scrambled to find a blank piece of paper and began rapidly scratching in the outline of a huge platform, nothing above it but clouds. Well, maybe a little bit above it; there was a cavern up on one of the peaks that would suit a plaza wonderfully, and she was pretty sure the stone would be strong enough to support some arches and a connecting tunnel while keeping the roof open. It had always seemed like a tranquil place.

~~~~~

"Oh, you actually did it!" Sunny chirped, collecting Glory's mess of papers and beginning to flip through them. "I was worried you two were going to avoid each other forever. Stepped on each other's tails?"

"Something like that," Glory interrupted, before Sunny could connect the dots out loud and probably  _very_ loudly. "Listen, is there any room in the budget for a plaza up on the peaks? And something for the IceWings, like, deeper in the mountain, where we might be able to get someone to frostbreath it to stay cold? I overlooked them since I didn't really know what they liked."

"Oh, there's always room in the budget. Thorn thinks the school is a great idea, she's really happy to see everyone recovering from the war so well. Yeah, I'll send her a letter."

"...Sunny," Glory asked cautiously. "How much money have we spent."

Sunny grinned, completely shameless. "That is a question that only Queen Thorn and her favourite daughter have an answer to."

"I'm your sister, that's like daughter-in-law. Queen to Queen, even. How much are we spending."

If Sunny could smile any larger, she'd break her jaw. "Not enough for Thorn to realize I don't know any math!"

**Author's Note:**

> Fen belongs to SkaiaGalaxy, and there is [adorable art.](https://skaiagalaxy.deviantart.com/art/fenami-727035092) Don't worry, permission was granted for her to cameo here!


End file.
